Leonard Lindsay ;

by Angus B. Reach

‘Now, then!’ roared Captain Jem, ramming down the tiller hard a port. ‘Sheets, boys, mind your sheets—in with them—in with the larboard sheets. Hurrah, boys, hurrah! show the Don that he must shut his claws quick, or we will slip through his fingers.’

The words had not been spoken when the Will-o’-the-Wisp flew round like a top, in the opposite direction to that of the Spaniard, plunging down into one tremendous sea, taking tons upon tons of the glancing green water over her weather bow, and then lying over to the wind, until the washing seas rose up to the very centre of her deck. Of course the studding-sail-booms snapped like pipe-stems, and the sails they supported burst away and floated down to leeward. But for this we cared very little.

‘If the spars stand it we’re safe,’ shouted the Captain to me.

I looked aloft, the schooner was almost on her broadside, the sea pouring over and over us in great curling volumes of blinding spray, flashing up high into the rigging, and drenching the surging, tearing canvas. This lasted but for a moment. There was a lull, the schooner righted in the water, plunged heavily at one or two seas, and then, although carrying a fearful press of sail, shot gaily away to windward. We looked astern. The Spaniard had been utterly discomfited by our manœuvre. After diverging from her course just enough, as she thought, to save us from being run down, she had been obliged to keep before the wind, being afraid, with all her sail, to try the desperate experiment of luffing up, and was now a good mile to leeward, her crew busily employed in getting in all her light canvas, evidently with the intent of following up the chase.

‘Now, boys!’ called out the captain—‘we have not shaken off the Don yet. He has had a taste of our quality, but he will be after us again. So while he is amusing himself to leeward yonder, let us get in a reef or so, the schooner will make better way through the water than when she is dragged down by too great a show of canvas.’

So presently the Will-o’-the-Wisp’ was under suitable sail, working hard to windward. Captain Jem was right in saying that the Spaniard meant not to give up his prey after one baffled swoop, and in a brief space he was close hauled upon the same tack with ourselves, careening down to the wind, until we sometimes expected to see him turn over bodily. It was lucky for us, that, heeling over so much, he could not bring his guns to bear upon the schooner. Once or twice he fired a cannon, but the ball must have passed far above us. Our own pieces were too small for us to return the compliment, across a mile of sea, with any chance of hard hitting; besides, it was our cue to trust rather to our legs than our teeth, and to mind our canvas rather than our guns.

All that long and anxious day did the Spaniard stick to our skirts. Had the breeze been lighter, we would have left him hand over hand, but the strong wind, and great tumbling seas, often bore us bodily to leeward, while the Spaniard burst through and through them with mighty plunges. Such a wind and sea, I repeat, could not but be of great advantage to the bigger and heavier ship. Thus it came to pass that when the sun touched the western waves, the Spaniard still held his position about a mile to leeward of the schooner. We had run more than one hundred miles since we hauled our wind, and still for all we could see, we had neither lost nor gained an inch.

The night came on, but the wind still howled unabatedly over the far-spreading ridges of angry water. There was no moon, and great patches of dusky clouds went scudding by between the ocean and the stars.

‘Now, my mates,’ quoth Captain Jem—‘we shall find out whether Jack Spaniard’s eyes mark well in the dark. Let all lights be extinguished in the ship, except the binnacle lantern.’

This order was speedily obeyed, and soon afterwards the binnacle lamp was carefully screened, and at the same instant we lit a bright lantern, and placed it conspicuously on our lee quarter. By this manœuvre it is evident that the Spaniard, if he saw aught, saw but one light, as though we carried no more. After this we tacked several times, shifting the lantern so as to allow our pursuer a good view of it, and make him believe that we were showing the light in bravado. By this time it was nine o’clock and the wind was sensibly abating. We could see naught of the Spaniard, although many a pair of eyes were strained until they ached and throbbed with vain efforts to make out the secret of his whereabouts. About ten o’clock, we were upon the starboard tack, the schooner then laying a course which would have brought her back to Jamaica. A good-sized cask was then prepared, by eight twelve-pound balls being cast into it as it stood on one end on deck. Then a sort of pole or spar, made out of an oar, was fitted into the cask, being stepped as it were amongst the cannon balls, and coming up through the opposite head of the cask, like a mast through the deck of a ship. This apparatus being well secured by stout ropes, was hove overboard, and slackening the lines, we saw that it floated perfectly upright. The machine was then hauled in again; the lantern which I have already mentioned, was made fast to the top of the pole, and then the cask and all were carefully lifted over the bulwark, and cast adrift upon the sea; while, at the same moment, the tiller was put down, the schooner tilted gaily round and filled upon the other tack, and in five minutes we were half a mile away from the decoy beacon, which glimmered with an uncertain light, as it rose rocking upon the ridges of the seas. In silence and in darkness we kept our new course. Happily this was the gloomiest period of the night. Lowering banks of cloud lay heavily upon the eastern horizon, and the stars only glimmered occasionally through the scud. The schooner was kept a little from the wind, so as to make her sail her very best, and went careering, as though she bore a light heart, across the waves. We saw or heard nothing of our enemy, and by midnight we trusted that many a league of ocean rolled between our gay schooner and the great Spanish man-of-war.